Friday, June 2, 2017

Report on experience: dead goat edition

In my main office – Red Cherry café – this morning I had a conversation with a very
nice man who had this week buried two goats. His mother-in-law’s goats, which
had died for no obvious reason, so he had to deal with them by digging deep
holes somewhere on the farm, bunging them in and covering them with soil. One
of them had rigor mortis, which made things awkward, burial-wise.

I arrived just after he had
received a phone call to say that another of his mother-in-law’s goats had died, so he was setting off
to bury it. “She has three more,” he said gloomily.

He must be getting good at this: he
had buried a (dead) alpaca previously. If you know alpacas, they are
intermediate in size between a goat and a horse.

I said brightly, “This manuscript I
am working on is about the Otago Mounted Rifles – my grandfather’s regiment –
heading off to Gallipoli and three horses die on the boat so they have to be
disposed of. Carried up on deck by three men and hiffed over the side. They
burst on impact, apparently.”

He knew all about dealing with dead
horses on land. You get a truck with a winch, or something.